


An Object Lesson

by amitai (xaritomene)



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Bullying, Gen, Ridiculous, School, Spies & Secret Agents, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 05:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1334143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaritomene/pseuds/amitai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone in Alex's school has thought him a bit of a wimp, ever since his uncle died and he started spending more and more time off school - with no good excuse. How will they react when they find out just how wrong they were?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unusual Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> A _very_ old fic, finished in 2007 and started in 2006. Originally on ff.net, moved to have all my fics in one place, and in case anyone wants to download it. (Hope springs eternal!)
> 
> Standard disclaimer: I only own the Alex Rider books in paperback.

The men and woman who sat around the table were some of the most lethal in the world. It wasn't just that they themselves dangerous, though they were: they masterminded and implemented some of the most daring and deadly schemes in the world. They had had a hand in many of the foremost terrorist attacks in the world; they had worked for almost all the best-known terrorist groups. Their business wasn't terror – their business was money. But terror paid better than most things.

These were people who had taken mercenary and made it an art form.

Julia Rothman had been replaced by a cold eyed, heavy jawed woman whose name was, incongruously, Dorothea Sweete. Dorothea Sweete had worked for Scorpia for years; her skill as a killer was only surpassed by her skill as a tactician, and she had several years of experience as one of the high-powered second-in-commands. And at the moment, the nine top members of Scorpia were discussing the shortcomings of their last operation.

A silence had fallen over the room as they contemplated what had happened; a silence vaguely reminiscent of the complete hush of a funeral parlour. The people in that windowless room in the Ca'Vedova knew how to stay silent for hours. Had they not been breathing, nothing would have given away that they were still alive.

Finally, it was the nameless Australian (who was occasionally called James Sloane, by the few members of his family he had left alive) who spoke up, in a curt, cold voice, straight to the point. "We were foolish to allow Mrs. Rothman's vendetta against the Rider family to obscure our view of Alex Rider."

"You think he could be useful?"

"Not so much that – though yes, he could have been." The Australian paused, weighing the value of one word against another. "We… allowed her to colour our perception. It was dangerous; she underestimated Rider, so we did too. Equally, we let her obsession with seeing the boy die take over from the main task, Invisible Sword. She engineered it so the he would be there, rather than engineering him so that he would be there. It was a foolish mistake."

"What do you suggest we do?" This was Dr. Three. He spoke in almost perfect English. There was a tendency that he had to elongate certain vowels, but even despite that, had you heard him speaking without seeing his face, it would have been difficult to say for certain what nationality he was. "We cannot change anything, and our customer has withdrawn his offer. Invisible Sword is obsolete. We cannot recruit Rider now; MI6 will have told him the truth, and in any case, we hired a contract killer to get rid of him, and he is not going to trust those who tried to kill him. Twice, no less. And those who killed his father."

"Julia was a fool about Rider from the beginning," Dorothea Sweete said, harshly from her corner of the table. All eyes swivelled to her, the newcomer in their midst, but she shrugged, indifferent to their scrutiny. "John Rider, I mean. I was her assistant at the time; for a clever woman, she made a fool of herself over him."

It was another characteristic unique to Scorpia – all assistants were alternated. None of the top nine members kept the same secretary or personal assistants for longer than three months at a time – it was an insurance against anyone knowing too much, as well as to stop any workplace relationships. The top nine members needed no relaxation time. For them, business was pleasure.

"She couldn't get revenge from John – but she would have Alex. Not only was he not her son, she would never forgive John Rider for not being who he said he was, and she needed revenge for that. All of us here can understand revenge."

"Revenge for lying to her, you mean?"

"Yes."

"His son – Alex – he wasn't lying to her. Why kill him, when he could have been such an asset?" Julien Gouard, a Frenchman, had defected even before the Cold War, and worked for Stalin during the Purges. He knew all about the waste of talent – he had done a lot of the wasting.

"I was not Julia Rothman's psychiatrist," Dorothea Sweete shrugged. "I wasn't even her assistant when John Rider died."

"Of course. Apologies, Miss Sweete." She inclined her head.

"Thank you. Accepted."

There was another icy hush.

"I think," said Dr. Three, dropping his words like lumps of ice into the cold, heavy silence, "that we need to teach Alex Rider an object lesson."

"We did a deal with MI6," Masayuki Nohmura said, softly. Everything he said was soft. He had been tortured at some point during his life, and the screaming had left him with a voice that barely went above a whisper. On the other hand, he was a world wide language expert, being conversant in over fifteen, and able to translate a further seven. While not strictly a terrorist, his torture, besides affecting his voice, had left him with a hatred of all intelligence organisations, who, he felt, had turned their back on him. He had been left with his captors for three years. "We said that we would leave him alone."

"And all such deals are honoured, of course," Dr. Three sneered at him. Nohmura shrugged.

"He is only a boy," he said. Dr. Three rolled his eyes at so blatant a display of sentimentality.

"Yes. Just a boy. A child." Levi Kroll had taken that statement quite a different way, and his eye lit up as he worked out what Dr. Three was suggesting. "A lesson on him would be a most effective way to show that we still have the power we had before, and we will still use it. We still look weak, after being bettered by a child… his mutilated body would be a perfect way to dispute that. A strong message."

"Indeed. But not only that. Invisible Sword was going to kill school children. We have lost the technology for that, alas," here, Dr. Three heaved a sigh, and a brief flicker of actual emotion scuttled across his face, but was gone in an instant – for a moment, it had looked almost like regret. "But we can still make a show of power; we may have lost status and face, but apart from that, we lack nothing else. We will regain both if we pull through on our promise of killing school children. And to both teach Alex Rider a lesson and regain our lost reputation, we should target…"

"Alex Rider's school?" it was Dorothea Sweete again. Her cold eyes had gained some animation as the talk went on.

"Alex Rider's school." Dr. Three agreed.


	2. Something Bugging You?

At that moment, Alex Rider was neither at school nor spying, but in karate class. It had been a while since he'd been to class - he hadn't had time for school let alone for hobbies since he'd taken up with MI6, but they'd assured him that he was a free agent again, and he'd been trying to pick up the threads of his normal life ever since. His doctor at St. Dominic's had given him a free bill of health, and advised him to build up his physical strength again. Alex had mentioned karate. The doctor had said it was perfect.

So here he was now, in the local sports hall, with a dozen or so other students all dressed in white with black belts. The coloured belt class had come and gone, and Alex had made his apologies to his instructor, and rejoined this one. They had worked through a fairly normal class – some line work, patterns, semi-free sparring, but now they were being partnered up for free sparring. Alex's heart was pumping at a ridiculous rate – quite apart from the fact he was, as he'd explained to his instructor, recovering from 'appendicitis', the last time he had "sparred" with someone, his life had depended on it. He had the bruises to prove it. Scorpia didn't do things in half measures; he had the bullet scar to prove that.

His instructor, a short, good-humoured man, rested his hand briefly on one of his shoulders as he passed.

"Take it easy, OK?" he said, and Alex jumped, startled out of his own thoughts, then realised that the instructor was talking about his recent operation. To be honest, Alex hadn't noticed any pain apart from the deep, residual ache that he knew he was going to feel for the rest of his life. "Don't over do it."

"I won't," Alex told him, smiling to reassure him. Then he pulled his attention back to his opponent, a boy a couple of years older than him, Charlie - they'd been training together for nearly six years. He was strong, but Alex knew from experience that he was quicker. In any case, it didn't really matter, assessing this boy. In five minutes, or even less, if Mike, the Instructor, decided it should be less, he would be facing a new different "enemy". It was a useful strategy – it got them all used to fighting people without the added pressure of it being a real fight. But Alex had fought in real fights, and he couldn't quite forget that.

"Begin!"

They both assumed a guarding block, and circled each other, on their toes. Alex was the first to move, aiming a quick strike to one of the boy's temples with such speed and ferocity that the boy had no hope of blocking it. It was only a chance move backwards that stopped it connecting, and possibly knocking him out, despite the headguard he was wearing.

"Alex, mate, calm down," the other boy said easily. Alex bit his lip – this was what he'd been afraid of – he'd trained himself to fight properly, not spar with friends.

"Sorry," he muttered, trying to brush it off.

Charlie made the next move, a front kick which Alex side-stepped, bringing a knife hand strike gently onto his neck.

"See, that's what I mean. Play nicely," Charlie grinned at the younger boy. It was always just a little nerve-wracking, sparring with Alex these days. He liked Alex well enough, but there was something dangerous about him, had been ever since his uncle died. Alex offered him a weak smile back.

Charlie tried his front kick again, and Alex, who had misinterpreted his preparation, made the wrong block. With a small shout of triumph, Charlie's foot connected squarely with Alex's chest. Alex dropped like a stone, trying to cry out, though the only sound that came out was a weak grunt.

"Alex?" Charlie said, shocked, dropping to his knees beside him. "Alex?!"

Mike was there in seconds. "What happened?" he asked curtly.

"I don't know – I got a kick to the chest passed his guard, and he fell…"

"He said he'd just been operated on for appendicitis…" Alex was white-faced with pain, but valiantly tried to shake them both off.

"I'm fine," he insisted through gritted teeth. "Really, I'm fine."

"Course you are," Mike agreed calmly. "Where did you kick him?" he asked Charlie in a gentler voice; the older student was white in the face. He pointed at Alex's chest.

"Around there…"

"Must have got a lucky blow to the solar plexus," he said cheerfully, helping Alex up. "Winded him, I bet. C'mon, Alex, up you get - I think you'd better sit the rest of this session out. You don't want to over-exert yourself!" He led Alex over to the benches lining the wall, and sat him down. "You need anything? Glass of water? Couple of aspirin?"

Alex shook his head, red-faced with embarrassment. "No - no, I'm fine. I'm really sorry-"

"You have to be healthy before you can practise karate," Mike told him firmly. "If anything, I'm disappointed in you for turning up too early in your recovery."

"I'm fine," Alex muttered again, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. After the first starbust of pain, it had dulled back to the manageable ache he was so used to by now, and he felt stupid for having drawn so much attention to himself, let alone for misreading the tells in a friendly bout of sparring. He was supposed to be good at this.

As he leant forwards, his gi billowed forward, and he had to jerk back upright sharply to stop the bullet scar being on full display. From the shock on Mike's face, he hadn't quite managed it.

"What was that?" Mike demanded, shock and worry warring on his face.

Alex shrugged, thinking fast. "Haven't you ever seen it before?" he asked, nonchalant. "Just a birthmark."

In a way, he supposed it was.

Mike nodded, eagerly grasping onto the most obvious explanation. "Oh, of course," he said airily. "Now you mention it, I do think I've caught a glimpse of it now and then. Look, Alex, I've got to get back to the class, but stay behind after, would you? There's a competition I'd like you to think about entering. Win some glory for the dojo!"

That sounded like a terrible idea. "I- look, I'd love to, Mike, really I would," he said quickly, "but - I don't think I can spar anymore, It's just - I got into this fight at school, really bad one, and whenever I spar, it's like I'm trying to really hurt someone now."

Mike looked briefly downcast, then brightened. "Never mind," he said bracingly. "Another time, eh? Tell you what, why don't you come to the littlies class at four, when you can? I've got to get my best students out there some how, you just need to practise. You won't have a flashback if you were walking a little kid through basic punches and blocks, will you?"

Alex really hoped not. "No - no, I don't think so," he agreed, more to end the conversation than anything. He didn't have any real intention of turning up to the class, after all.

"That's the spirit," Mike said, smiling again. "We'll get you over this. It's happened to most of us. We panic, and our body remembers the panic better than it remembers our training. It reacts in the way it would to the panic, see? But training has a longer overall effect than panic, so eventually, you'll wear down to the point where you can manage the panic, and still use your training. Do you see?"

Alex nodded, slowly. "I think so."

"Great!" Mike enthused, patting him on the shoulder. "Look, why don't you nip off home. I can trust you to do your own warm-down, and I'll see you next week, alright? Don't forget about the white-belt class!"

Alex watched him go before standing to leave. Mike was a good guy; Alex had always liked him, and he hated having to lie to him.

He hated how well he lied to him.

**

It was only a short walk back to Ian Rider's house in Chelsea. Sometimes, Alex thought that he would never think of it as home again – or even as his house. Ian Rider had filled it with his ideals, and his furniture, and himself. There was almost no room for Alex to make an impression on it; but with Jack's help, it could at least feel welcoming.

Jack was a godsend. She didn't ask too many questions, and she supported Alex no matter what. She was one of the few people who made Alex feel normal – her, and Tom Harris and his brother, who, despite knowing that he was a spy, never seemed to feel the need to mention it.

"I'm home!" he called.

Jack's head appeared through the kitchen door. "Heya," she greeted him. "How was your lesson?"

"Good. Yeah, good. Most of it." He made his way in to the kitchen, where she was cooking pasta.

Jack eyed him warily. "What's 'most of it' mean?" she asked carefully, and he shrugged, poking at the pasta with the spatula.

"One of the other kids got a lucky shot in," he said, patting the bullet wound meaningfully, careful not to put too much pressure on it. By and large, it was fine, but he'd learnt early on to be wary of putting any stress on it just yet. "It really hurt."

"I bet it did," Jack said sharply. "You should go and see that doctor of yours – what's his name - Ferrara. Maybe ask him if you can have some more PT. After all, getting kicked in the same place as you've just been shot… that's no joke, Alex."

"I know," Alex muttered. "I was the one who got kicked."

Jack put her hands on her hips, and looked down at him, her expression going from annoyed to worried. "I'm sorry, Alex. I just don't know how to react anymore. I mean, you used to come home from that class happy, or annoyed 'cos you didn't do as well as you wanted to – and now you're coming home and telling me that you got kicked in the chest and passed out! I can't do anything to help you any more, Alex. Until you start getting into the same scrapes as a normal teenager – you know, nothing involving shootings or global terrorism – I might as well be a non-speaking extra."

"I'm sorry," Alex apologised sincerely. "I don't mean to."

"I know you don't," she said, wearily. "It's not your fault, I'm just - I shouldn't have gone off on you, sweetheart. I guess I'm just scared; I never know what's gonna happen next." She shrugged, and made a determined effort to brighten up. It didn't quite work, but Alex appreciated all the same. "You lay the table, and get yourself a drink, Mama Starbright's pasta will be coming any moment."

"Did your mum cook a lot of pasta?"

"No, but we cook it exactly the same way. Four minute instant pasta with tomato sauce and butter. So I guess it is hers."

"And the rest of Italy's, sure."

"Oh, just get yourself a drink." But she was smiling. It felt reassuringly normal to be able to joke with her - more normal than school and all his usual activities. Unlike everything else, Jack hadn't changed.

When they were sat down and eating, Jack said, cheerfully, "so, if you haven't scheduled in any high-octane fights or a car chase or anything, d'you wanna go and see a film tomorrow, or something? I mean, it's Friday - got any plans?"

Alex gave her an apologetic look. "I'm really behind at school, after, well… after everything," he said quietly. "I think I'd better spend the weekend trying to catch up. Tom's coming round, to help me with it."

She grinned at him. "If Tom's coming round, you won't get any work done at all."

"Want to bet?" he asked promptly.

"I don't bet." She laughed. "Not with you. I still maintain you cheat."

**

By the time Monday came, Alex was feeling almost cheerful. He was well primed on everything they had covered that term, and Alex could still remember everything that Mr. Grey had taught him. He was actually feeling confident about school, which hadn't happened since his uncle had died.

As he went in through the gates, he could see the changes. The science lab had been rebuilt – he felt a twinge of guilt go through him – and he was unsurprised to see that there seemed to be some sort of security checks around the medical centre. After what Scorpia had tried to do through injections, he would have been more surprised if there hadn't been security checks in place. Britain was cracking down on her medical security – and, Alex assumed, the Prime Minister was going to be paying rather more attention to MI6 and MI5 from now on.

The other thing was that people were looking at him, and whispering things. Alex shrugged. They knew nothing about him, and he could weather a little idle gossip. He was pretty sure that was what kept the school buildings standing.

"Alex!" Tom yelled across the playground. "Hey, Alex!"

Tom waved him over to where he was standing with a circle of other boys in their year. Alex made his way over, but his entire body had become taut with tension. Tom, he knew, wasn't going to be a threat. Tom was a really good friend - but from what Tom had said of the rumours flying around about him, he wasn't so sure of his reception from the other boys.

"Alex."

"Hi!"

"Wow, long time, no see!"

"How's your 'appendicitis'?" One boy, Jack Miles, asked, grinning conspiratorially. "Can we see the scar?"

For one wild moment, Alex was tempted to say, 'yeah, sure, why not?', and show them the scar from the bullet he'd taken in the chest. And then he felt Tom's eyes on him, worried but intrigued despite himself. He couldn't tell them. Tom would go mental, and the rest of them would freak.

"Haven't got a scar," he shrugged, grinning back weakly. "They just gave me drugs. Trying to shrink it, they said."

"Bet you loved that," Jack said, winking at one of the others.

"Sure, whatever." Alex pretended not to see, or understand, the wink. The drug-addict rumour was a persistent one - after what had happened with Skoda, Alex didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe both; then they'd really have something to talk about.

It was Tom who thankfully drew the attention away from Alex. "I was round at Alex's on Saturday," he said with a grin. "I asked to see the scar, too. But if he's got a scar anywhere on him, he's not sharing." At this, he gave Alex a vaguely wounded glance; Alex had refused to tell him what really happened.

Before it could get any more awkward, the bell rang for the beginning of lessons, and Alex followed the rest of the boys into the main school building. Despite his non-answers, they seemed to accept him easily enough. School children – except Alex – normally only ask the questions they have to.

**

A few miles away, in a nondescript building some way away from Brooklands, just near enough to be in comfortable walking distance, a man watched all of this on a large, flat Plasma screen.

He worked for Scorpia – or he did at the moment. A few weeks before, he had been working for an Australian organisation who wanted a certain person closely watched before they disposed of him. Before that, a rich Indian businessman had hired him to spy on his wife, who he thought was having an affair.

The man specialised in integrated spy technology – bugs. Other people's secrets were something that people would pay highly for, and he exploited that, earning huge sums of money at a time. This time, it just happened to be Scorpia paying him, and the primary target happened to a fair-haired fourteen year old school boy, known as Alex Rider. The secondary target was a busy inner-city comprehensive school.

The whole of Brooklands had been bugged over the last few weeks; the cheap school alarm system had been laughably easy to override. There were bugs in the lights, in the doorframes, even one in a door-handle; there were cameras watching everything. By the end of the week, this man would know all of the school's weak points, and all of Alex Rider's friends – all of his weak points, in fact. By the end of the fortnight, he would know the school routine, and, more specifically, Alex Rider's routine. All of this information would be passed on to Scorpia.

He smiled, and swivelled in his chair, turning to a computer monitor he had installed, where nearly fifty tiny pictures were crammed onto the screen, a tiny arrow pointing outwards in one corner. He scanned then for Alex Rider, and when he couldn't find him, he clicked on the arrow. Another full screen of different tiny pictures appeared, with the same arrow in the bottom right hand corner. Finally, he located the boy, in the science schools. He clicked on that particular picture, and allowed it to fill the massive plasma TV screen behind him. Turning up the sound, he settled down to watch Alex Rider.


	3. Lies and Videotape

The week was three days old by the time Alex started to feel that there was something wrong.

He had felt it the first day, and dismissed it – he'd been on edge, what with being back at school and back in a normal routine, surrounded by children his own age, who, he knew, thought that he was something a bit odd. The second day, he had had the uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching him permanently, but whenever he looked round, somebody hurriedly looked away, so it wasn't exactly unreasonable to assume that was why.

But now his oddity had settled down a little, and no one was staring at him anymore - in fact, no one was paying him much attention at all now, so it couldn't be that. What was it that was making him so jumpy? This was Brooklands – safe, pleasant Brooklands. Nothing could happen here.

And then he remembered where he'd last felt this uncomfortable, bug-under-a-microscope sensation. Point Blanc.

Alex almost laughed at himself. The headmaster at Point Blanc had been a psychopath; he'd been planning to kill sixteen fourteen-year-old boys in cold blood, fifteen by outright murder, and then the sixteenth – Alex – by dissecting him while he was still alive. Dr. Grief, with his red eyes, coldness, and his fanatical assistant, was about as far removed from Mr. Bray, Brooklands' relaxed, kindly headmaster, as it was possible to be.

Nevertheless, he still felt uncomfortable. He'd had enough experience of this sort of thing to know that he'd have to really search to find any bugs - a quick check wasn't going to cut it - and he'd never get the opportunity to do so. They kept the pupils busy at Brooklands; he'd never have the time.

Shrugging, he tried to put it out of his mind, and continued through his next lessons (Biology, English and Spanish) almost without thinking about it at all. The annoying doubt, however, was stuck in the back of his mind, and no matter how hard he tried, he just could not forget it.

" _What did you do on your holidays_ , Alex?" his Spanish teacher asked him forcefully. Alex got the impression that it wasn't the first time she'd asked.

" _Sorry_ ," he said quickly. "Um, right. _On my holidays_..." he paused for a moment. What had he done over the holidays? He couldn't say what he'd really done: 'sorry, miss, in my holidays, I stopped a multi-billionaire pop singer from unleashing nuclear weapons on the world, and then I joined a criminal organisation, got caught by my old employers (MI6, in case you're interested), re-joined the organisation under cover, stopped all of my school mates from dying, but got shot for it'. And it wasn't because he didn't know how to say it in Spanish. Ian Rider had been strict about languages.

"What is it, Alex?" his teacher asked in English, rather sarcastically. "Cat got your tongue? Or can't you remember what you did?"

"No, miss." He shook his head. "I'm just trying to remember the words."

At the back of the classroom, near Alex, someone smothered a giggle. Everyone – including the teacher – knew that Alex was practically fluent in Spanish, which meant that everyone knew he was lying.

"If you've finished "remembering the words"," the teacher said, with no little asperity, "You could always try answering the question."

With a sigh, Alex did as he was told.

"So, Alex, what did you do during your holidays?" Jack Douglas asked, coming up to him after the lesson, flanked by a couple of friends, who stayed a little way back from Alex.

Probably think I'll give them something catching, Alex thought grimly.

Smothering that thought, he gave Jack a long, level look, until Jack started to squirm. Then Alex turned away, gathering up his books. "Took drugs," he said simply, and left them to gossip in peace.

**

"Isn't it really frustrating?" Tom asked him at lunch. "You know. Everyone thinks you're a wimp, and you're actually, like, a bad-ass super-spy?"

"Keep your voice down," Alex muttered uncomfortably. "I'm not a super-spy."

"Eh, you're more of a super-spy than I am," Tom shrugged, biting into a burger, "So," he mumbled around his mouthful, "what actually happened in Consanto? After you left Jerry and me, I mean?"

Alex looked around at the crowded cafeteria. "It's really not the best idea to tell you here," he said awkwardly.

"Fine, then," Tom said, looking mulish even as he wiped ketchup off his chin. "I'll come round to your house after school today. You can tell me then – and help me with my maths prep."

Alex gave in gracefully; Tom wasn't the type to let it go without a fight. "OK," he said reluctantly. "Come round after school, I'll tell you what I can - but don't expect too much, OK? And I've really got to get my homework done – all of my teachers are after me to do extra work, cos I've missed so much."

"I bet," Tom said with a laugh. "Too busy saving the world for algebra, huh?"

"Who's saving the world?" Nick Stephenson, a friend of Alex's and Tom's from football, said, sitting down opposite Alex.

"Me, apparently," Alex said, shooting Tom a surreptitious glare to keep him quiet. Tom just shrugged, and took another mouthful of burger. "Tom says it's the only possible answer to why I've been out of school so much."

"When really you've been doing what?" Nick asked.

Alex couldn't really blame him for asking, though it was annoying. He knew that, with his reappearance, his disappearance had become a source of interest again, and everyone wanted to know why he'd been missing for so long, so often. "I got glandular fever after my uncle died," he lied, as he'd been told to. "It really hit hard at my immune system. I catch things a lot easier now."

"I'll say," Nick laughed, and Alex flushed, embarrassed despite himself. He looked up to see Tom giving him a sympathetic look.

"But we all know that Alex is Mr. Tough Guy," he said jokingly, distracting Nick from Alex. "So that must be a lie fed to him by MI6, who are actually using him as their top-secret new weapon."

For one heart-stopping moment, Alex wondered what the hell Tom was doing - then rationality kicked back in. Tom was just continuing the joke; if everyone thought 'spying' was an in-joke between Tom and Alex about Alex's absences, they could get caught talking about it a hundred times, and no one would think anything of it. Well. It was school - they might think the pair of them were a bit weird. But they wouldn't even suspect the truth. 

After all, who would?

He made himself grin, as carefree and easy as possible. "Who wouldn't want a shot at all this?" he asked, with an extravagant gesture, and Nick laughed.

"Mad, the pair of you," he said simply, and turned the conversation back to football.

**

The man watching them a mile or so away rewound what he had just seen, and enlarged Tom's face. Satisfied that he knew what the smaller boy looked like, he followed him through out the day, until he managed to lip read his name off one of the teachers.

"Tom Harris." He smiled. Bullseye.

**

After school, Alex and Tom cycled back to the house on Cheyne Walk, where Jack greeted them with a smile and an upraised eyebrow on seeing Tom. Tom just grinned at her, wide and insouciant, and managed to con some biscuits out of her.

Tom went up ahead of Alex, and Jack caught Alex with a look, just before he followed his friend upstairs.

"Tom… knows about you and MI6, doesn't he?" she asked, knowing the answer, but wanting it confirmed.

"Yeah. He does," Alex nodded, wary.

"Be careful, Alex, OK?" she said, very gently. "I know you need someone to talk to, but - you're both just kids. Don't say anything you don't need to, alright?" 

Alex shut his eyes for a long moment. "'You need never unsay something you never said'," he agreed. It had been one of Ian's favourite sayings.

Jack pulled him into a quick hug. "MI6 are really doing a number on you," she muttered into his hair, before letting him go. "Don't they care how much damage they're doing you?"

Once, Alex would have baulked at being called 'damaged', but it wasn't as though he could disagree with her. "MI6 have never really cared how much damage they cause me," he pointed out absently. "Well," he amended fairly. "They do a little. Or Mrs. Jones does, I think. But Alan Blunt… he doesn't want me to get killed, because I'm useful to him. That's all."

Jack opened her mouth to reply, when their _tete-a-tete_ was interrupted by a yell from upstairs. "Alex! What are you doing down there!?"

"Coming!" he yelled back. "He'll go before tea, I think, or else he'll have to ring his parents, so you'll know," he told his guardian, "And I promise I'll get my homework done."

She grinned. "You're rather more like a fourteen-year-old when you talk like that," she told him.

In his room, Alex shut the door, and flopped down onto the bed next to his friend. "Right, OK. Let's get it over with," he said, steeling himself. "What do you want to know?"

Tom looked at him thoughtfully for a second. "If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to," he offered. "I'm not going to make you if you don't want to. I'd just – I'd like to know."

"I don't mind," Alex said - it wasn't quite a lie. "I guess it'd be good to tell someone. Just - don't freak out, OK?"

"Promise," Tom agreed, idly miming crossing his heart. In another life, Alex might have managed to smile at that.

"Right, so, there's something I didn't tell you," Alex admitted. "During the thing with Damien Cray…"

"The creep who made you live that computer game?" Tom asked, frowning with concentration.

Alex nodded, his mouth twisting wryly. Whenever anyone mentioned the computer game Damien Cray had forced him to live through, he could still see the grotesque guards who had dressed up as Aztec gods, still feel the sting of the razor boomerang as it grazed his back, still taste the snake blood he had had to put in his mouth. "Yeah. Yeah, him," he nodded. "When he died on the plane, he had a contract killer there with him, a man called Yassen Gregorovich-"

"You've mentioned him before," Tom said, looking away from Alex as he struggled to remember. "Oh, yeah – he was the one who let you live, after he'd killed Herod Sayle, who wanted to give away all those laptops, right?"

"Yeah," Alex nodded. "Right, well, Yassen told me about my dad."

"He knew your dad?" Tom gaped at him. "What, did he kill him or something?"

"No. My dad worked with him," Alex said painfully, fixing his eyes on the wall opposite. The confession didn't come easily.

"So this Yassen Gregorovich was a banker, or whatever, before he became a contract killer," Tom nodded, laughing weakly. "That's it, isn't it? He got bored with being a banker, shot his boss, and became an assassin."

"No," Alex sighed, looking back at his friend. "My dad was a contract killer, with Yassen. Or so Yassen thought."

"Oh my god," Tom groaned, "this is some straight-up James Bond stuff, Alex. When you're older, you'll turn away from truth and justice and MI6, who have been telling you lies for so long, and I'll become a spy, and we'll have to try and kill each other."

"It's too late, Tom. You weren't a spy soon enough."

Tom, for all that he was in the bottom set for almost everything, wasn't stupid. "You've already turned away from MI6?" he gaped. "Oh my god, Alex." His eyes went huge. "Are you going to have to kill me if you tell me anymore?"

Alex punched him lightly on the arm. "Of course I'm not, idiot," he said sternly, managing a smile. "Or I _wouldn't be telling you_. Just shut up and let me finish my story, OK?" Tom nodded, eyes wide. "Yassen Gregorovich told me to find Scorpia, and my destiny," Alex told him, and Tom rolled his eyes, but kept quiet. "He said I'd find them in Venice. That party was all part of it, you see. One of the leaders of Scorpia was the hostess. Julia Rothman. Anyway, one of her agents found me in her study, and tried to drown me – I've told you all of this, haven't I?" Tom nodded. "OK, well then – after I jumped into Consanto, I met the same agent again – his name was Nile – and he was different. He took me to meet Julia Rothman in a hotel in Positano straight afterwards."

"What was she like?"

"Beautiful but mad," Alex said bluntly. "I mean, you wouldn't notice it straight away, but she just wanted to see people suffer, and she made it into a job. It paid well, and she got to have fun. She lied to me, a lot – she manipulated me even more the MI6, just because she wanted to see me suffer. She was in love with my dad."

Tom shuddered. "That must have been weird."

"It was, a bit." Alex nodded. "But it's not like I ever really knew my dad, is it? It was like talking about a stranger. But we've got some things in common - his writing is just like mine, he liked the same drink as me, little things like that. Anyway," he dragged himself away from that line of thought with an almost visible effort. "Mrs. Rothman lied to me, and I fell for it. I joined Scorpia." It was almost a relief to confess it at last, even if it was to Tom, who was listening avidly. "She took me to a training centre near Venice, where they gave me a shot of something, which turned out to be poison, but I didn't know it at the time, obviously…"

"They poisoned you? Why aren't you dead?"

"You've got the same poison inside you, too, if you had your BCG jab."

"Yeah, I've had it." Tom nodded, screwing up his face. "Hurt like hell, too."

"OK. Well, basically – it's all kind of confusing, actually," Alex paused. "Basically, my dad was a double agent. He worked for MI6 too…"

"Nothing like inheriting the family business," Tom said absently.

Alex smiled weakly. "Yeah. So, my dad was working for MI6, and Scorpia found out. They're the reason my parents are dead. I didn't know that, though, so I went along with them, and nearly got myself killed doing it. I stopped them, but - but I was an idiot. The whole thing was-" Alex rubbed a hand over his face, stumbling to a halt. "I'm really not doing this very well," he said miserably. "Look, basically, I'd told Scorpia that I couldn't kill anyone, and they didn't believe me; they said I just needed to find the right first target. They'd made it seem as though Mrs - this woman at MI6 had played a major role in killing my dad. So they made me try and kill her. I nearly did it, too."

"Your last week of holiday was a lot more exciting than mine," Tom muttered. "And more confusing."

"Yeah, well," Alex shrugged. "Try living through it."

"But what was this 'appendicitis' thing all about?" Tom demanded, and Alex sighed.

"Scorpia shot me," Alex said heavily. "Outside the MI6 Headquarters. But hey, they missed, right? No harm done."

Tom stared at him. "They - they _shot_ you? Jesus, Alex, are you OK?!"

Alex laughed humourlessly. "I'm alive," he pointed out. "I'm walking around. What more do you want?"

"I can't believe you _got shot_ ," Tom breathed, beginning to frown. "Oh my God, Alex, tell me you're done with all this. You are, right? You're not going to have to go back?"

"I'm done," Alex promised him. "I mean, MI6 has said they won't get in touch again. But I don't know that everyone else is going to be so forgiving. I mean - look. Have you noticed anything, I don't know - strange? At school?"

"Apart from you being there?"

Alex managed a weak smile. "Very funny, Tom."

"OK, honestly?" Tom shrugged. "No, I haven't. But I'm not a super spy like you. What'm I supposed to be looking for?"

"I don't know, exactly," Alex said, frustrated "Like there's someone watching you, I guess."

Tom shook his head. "No? I haven't noticed anything like that. Maybe schools just creep you out, after that school in France with Dr. Good-Grief or whatever. Or maybe you're just not in them enough to be used to them anymore."

"Maybe," Alex agreed, and let it drop. "Right, enough of this. Maths prep, c'mon."

Tom groaned, flopping back against Alex's pillows. Alex smiled a little to himself - a friend like Tom was a godsend. Half an hour talking about terrorist attacks and bullet wounds, and it was homework that made him freaked him out.

**

At midnight, Alex's alarm went off. Slipping out of bed, he drew on a black T-shirt and black trousers, heading downstairs and leaving the house almost silently; he winced as the lock clicked shut behind him. Then, climbing onto his bike, he set off for Brooklands.

He knew there was something strange happening at school, and he wasn't naïve enough anymore to ignore his instincts. He'd bet good money that if it wasn't something to do with him, it was another plan of Scorpia's, or an agency like Scorpia. And he was determined to find out what it was.


	4. Mutually Assured Destruction

Alex took very little time to cycle to Brooklands. It was a route he'd been cycling for years now – ever since his uncle deemed him old enough to ride on the roads. Even the dark and the slippery drizzle couldn't put him off. This was a routine thing he could have done blindfolded, and still have arrived in time for school.

Dressed all in black, he was hardly noticeable as he slipped across the playground and into the main building. It had taken him twenty minutes to make the journey, and the clock on top of the main building was standing at a quarter past twelve. Dimly, Alex could hear Big Ben chiming in the distance. It meant that, if he was supposed to be getting up at seven o'clock for an eight o'clock school day, he had to leave at about six thirty. He had just over six hours to search for hidden cameras – without being caught.

Using a few of the things his time with Scorpia had taught him, he managed to bypass the school alarm without disabling it – which would have raised alarms of its own in the morning – and ran silently up to his English classroom. With six lessons a week, he spent the most time in there, and if there was someone watching the school because of him, there were bound to be cameras in there somewhere.

He had no way of knowing that the entire school had been thoroughly rigged, and that, even now, there was a night-watcher gazing at him with puzzled intensity.

Up in his English classroom, he examined all of the places he imagined a camera could be held; the lights, which he left off, in favour of using his torch; the back of the teachers desk, which faced the class; the four corners of the room; the door-handle. It was when he was examining the door handle that he saw the thin white wire that he didn't recognise, running along the edge of the skirting-board. It disappeared under the fire extinguisher, and seemed to feed itself into the door frame – or, more specifically, the building putty that was put around the edge of the door-frame to seal it in place. Rejuvenated by success, Alex searched the door-frame, and found a tiny, perfectly round piece of black glass. It had to be a camera, because why else would there be something like that embedded in the door-frame?

Searching the frame, Alex found two others, which gave whoever it was who had installed them a full view of the entire room. He rummaged in the bag he had brought, taking out a screwdriver and a pair of wire cutters. He toyed with the idea of stabbing the piece of glass, thus breaking the camera, but then decided against it. The wire couldn't be anything else, it had to be the electricity for those cameras. He held the wire cutters to the wire, then froze.

Somewhere in the building, a door had clicked shut. Normally, such a tiny sound would be completely inaudible among the general daytime noise of a busy comprehensive school. But it was a quarter to one in the morning, and the whole place was almost dead silent. Quickly, Alex cut the wire, turned off his torch and ran.

He made a bee-line for the DT Centre, where there would be supplies available to use as weapons, and the large supply cupboard was big enough to hide in comfortably - but he had no way of knowing that there was no hope of hiding in the school itself. To hide, he'd have to leave the school buildings, which he had no intention of doing. The man Scorpia had employed had left his night-watcher observing the cameras, and he was in constant contact with him. Even in the dark, he knew where Alex was.

He stalked the boy carefully, until he came to the cupboard where Alex had hidden himself.

"Alex," he called mockingly, taunting him. "Come out, come out wherever you are."

Although Scorpia had employed him (and paid him well) to watch Alex Rider, they had given no specifics, and he hadn't asked for any. He had assumed that Alex Rider must be the son of a wealthy man, on whom Scorpia wanted blackmail material - maybe Alex Rider smoked weed, or was sleeping with his girlfriend or boyfriend, something embarrassing, but nothing particularly hardcore. He might be the son of Katherine Rider, the novelist, or Edward Rider, the oil tycoon. Rider was a common enough name, and there were endless possibilities as to whose spoilt son Alex might be. But because he was expecting a scared, spoilt child, in school at night on a dare, or maybe for some casual vandalism, he wasn't expecting the door to fly open in his face, sending him reeling backwards.

A slim, fair-haired boy dressed in black shot past him, and he only just managed to grab him by the ankle, tripping him up. Alex's forehead crashed into one of the desks as he went down, and he cried out, scrambling up, only to find himself faced with a man several inches taller than him, nearly a stone heavier, and with a lot of hurt pride.

He had no other choice. Biting his lip nervously, he took the guard position.

 _You see, Mike_ , some calm, sarcastic part of his mind said, _this is why I don't like sparring. My opponents are always bigger than me, and they're always trying to hurt me._

The man lashed out with his foot, and though Alex dodged, he still caught the boy on his leg. He wasn't a martial-arts expert – certainly nothing like Nile, the last man he had fought all out with – but he had experience, height and weight on his side. Alex had speed, desperation and the hope that his opponent would underestimate him, but he never knew whether that would be enough.

He went through the motions of a classic jab-and-kick move, and managed to get a good kick into to the man's midriff, when he realised that he was going to lose.

The man grabbed his foot, moving faster than Alex would have thought possible, twisting him, and sending Alex flying. "So you think you can beat me, huh?" he panted, putting a foot on Alex's back, and pressing down.

Alex shook his head. The man gave a triumphant grunt, and that was when Alex moved. He rolled away from him, and even though the sole of the shoe gave him rubber burn, he had the satisfaction of hearing the man stumble headfirst into one of the desks, tipping it over. Alex made a break for the door, but just as he was half-way out, a hand closed on his hair, pulling him backwards. Alex yelled.

The man threw him down, and advanced on him. Alex got to his feet as quickly as he could, but by the time he was upright, the man had a solid guard up, and Alex knew that he had no way of getting out of this. He couldn't run away anymore, and he couldn't win this fight. Either way, he was screwed.

He lashed out at the man's knee with one foot, and caught him a glancing blow – the man, abandoning finesse, threw him into a desk. He slid across the classroom, and felt the hollow metal legs of the desk buckle slightly as he hit the opposite wall. When he pushed himself away from the desk, he saw that he'd hit the white-board, and cracked it.

The man – whoever he was – was already on him, and if Alex had been any other fourteen year old boy, he would have been begging him to stop, and he certainly wouldn't still have been fight. But Alex wasn't any other fourteen year old boy.

He threw himself at the man, missed, rolled, and ran for it. For the first time in his life, he was blinded by real panic. This was his school, things like this weren't supposed to happen here! Even in Constanto, when he'd thought Nile was going to kill him, he hadn't felt this scared. Nile had been an assassin, straight down and simple, but Alex had known that, and he'd been able to judge his actions accordingly. But he didn't know this man, and he didn't know why he was here, or why he was here for him, or why he knew his name. Scorpia would have been his first bet – but they had made a deal with MI6, and they were truthful to a certain extent… weren't they?

Alex ran until he found himself in a dead end, in another of the classrooms. Surely the man wouldn't find him here, would he?

As it turned out, he did. He was already there by the time Alex turned round, and he threw a chair at him. Alex dodged it, and almost smiled – he couldn't expect to beat a much more agile fourteen year old like that. The chair cracked as it hit a desk, which toppled over with a crash, putting a hole in the linoleum. Alex stared sickly at it, knowing that any strangeness at Brooklands would always point the finger of blame at him. He'd come here trying to save his school-mates the same prickling fear that he'd gone through at Point Blanc, but it look like the only thing he was going to do was destroy even more of their school.

He did the only thing he could think of, and took the offensive approach. As long as the man kept him on defence, he couldn't win, no matter what he did. He barrelled his full weight into him, and sent him stumbling backwards. Their combined weights put a dent in the plaster, and all Alex got for it was a fist to the face. His mouth began to take on the coppery taste of blood, as blood from his bitten tongue and lip spread. He knew he had present an odd picture – a bruise forming around his eye; a blood on his lips; one arm dangling, practically useless, from where he'd hit the desk; dressed in black, like some wannabe assassin. _Fitting_ , Alex thought grimly, and concentrated on the fight at hand.

He had to dodge another chair, which went flying through one of the windows. They were on the second floor, and it hit the ground with a hell of a crash. It also triggered the school alarm system, and the man grabbed the front of Alex's long sleeved T-shirt.

"Maybe next time, Alex, you'll leave well enough alone."

Alex paused for a beat, frowning. "You have no idea who I am, do you?" he said, more than a little surprised. He'd assumed the man was after him, but if he didn't know who Alex worked for - either the plot wasn't aimed at Alex, or this man was just a cat's-paw.

The man laughed in his face. "I know everything about you. Do I need to worry about 'who you are'?"

"Maybe you should," Alex said, and grinned deliberately wide - he could taste the blood on his teeth. 

The man stopped laughing abruptly. "Did you work for Scorpia?" he asked, eyeing Alex warily.

"I don't know what you mean," Alex said tightly.

"I'm not getting paid enough for this," the man said, shaking his head. "Next time you see Dr Three, tell him I just upped my fee." He shot Alex a particularly nasty grin, and slipped out of the door. Alex ran to follow him, wanting to know exactly what he'd just meant - and found himself surrounded. The police had arrived, summoned by the alarm; Alex was trapped between a window he couldn't jump from and a door he couldn't get out. They took one look at Alex, dressed in black, and standing in the middle of a practically destroyed classroom, put two and two together, and came up with eight.

Alex spent the rest of the night in a cell.

**

He woke up with cold bright light filtering through the grimy, barred window. Last night, they had shoved him in there, and locked the door, forgoing any medical attention on the grounds that he was a 'dangerous criminal'. Now, as he woke, he could feel the dull ache from his eye, and the throbbing pain in his shoulder. He also seemed to have done something to his leg, because when he stood, fiery bolts of pain shot through his calf and knee. Rolling up his trouser leg, he saw a mess of congealed blood just below his knee – probably caused by hitting the edge of the table, but Alex couldn't sort out his confused, blurring memories enough to be certain.

He was in the cell for over two hours – though it felt longer – before a cardboard-faced police woman came and escorted him out. Alex knew better than to try and gain any sympathy from her. She'd tell her superiors that he'd tried to play her, and it would just land him in even more trouble. To people like her, an attempt to gain sympathy was as good as an admission of guilt. Alex was getting good at reading people, and people who worked for a system were never difficult to understand.

To his surprise, he was taken to Brooklands, and escorted firmly up to Mr. Bray's office. His one-man police escort left him at the door, and he knocked, wincing as the rough wood bit against scraped knuckles.

Mr. Bray motioned for him to take a seat, and sat down behind his desk. Alex shifted uncomfortably in the soft leather seat; his headmaster looked like he couldn't decide whether to be disappointed or angry, and Alex knew from experience that both were equally difficult to deal with.

"Against my better judgement, I've decided not to expel you, Alex," Mr Bray said, looking at him sternly. "But I'm taking you back on probation, do you understand?" Alex nodded, feeling rather blank and numb. He was sure he looked as blank as he felt - Mr Bray sighed heavily and shook his head. "Do you know how much trouble you've caused for us, Alex?" he asked rather plaintively. "At least five hundred pounds, to repair the two classrooms you wrecked, detrimental news coverage - that's the only reason we're not pressing charges against you, we can't afford to look even worse. And you have your guardian to thank that we're not expelling you! I was tempted – after that affair with the science schools, and the amount of school you're missing, you wouldn't exactly be a huge loss to us, you know. But he made some excellent points, so we're keeping you on, _provided_ you prove yourself to be a model student for the rest of the year." Alex would be willing to bet that the 'excellent points' his 'guardian' had made came with an equally excellent check, and that all of it had come from MI6. Of course they wouldn't want any attention drawn to him. 

"I'm sorry, sir," he said quietly, when it became obvious that Mr Bray was waiting for him to speak.

"You're always sorry, Alex," Mr. Bray sighed. "I understand that you were angry about getting beaten up," Alex's head shot up at that, "but really, why were you out at midnight at all? Your housekeeper was frantic, now she's just furious. Was it really necessary to vandalise two classrooms? And why _those_ two classrooms?"

Alex looked at him for a long moment. This was his chance; he could tell the truth, and maybe, for once in his life, somebody would believe him. But looking at Mr. Bray's care-worn, tired face, he knew that even if he believed him, no one else would. He'd still get the same punishment, and in the end, it might just make more problems for a man who had only ever tried to help him. "I don't know," he shrugged. As Mr. Bray raised an eyebrow, he elaborated, lying through numb lips, "I think I was a bit drunk, sir."

Another tired sigh. "Alright. Well, your guardian said he was going to be picking you up for an urgent appointment somewhere – again – and that you'd be missing the rest of today." He looked at Alex sternly. "Don't expect any leniency from us again, Alex. This is your last warning."

"Yes, sir. Thank you." He stood awkwardly, wishing he could say more - even though Mr Bray had been fed a pack of lies, he was being incredibly lenient for what he thought Alex had done - but there was nothing else he was allowed to say. He turned and left.

**

Tom cornered him at the school gates, while Alex waited to be picked up - he should have been in class, and from the way he was panting, he'd probably asked for a pass to the loo and run after him. "Alex, everyone's saying that you're the person who trashed Miss Webster's classroom," he said urgently, "and Mr. Sinclair's. It's not true, is it?"

Alex shut his eyes for a long moment. "Yeah," he said finally, "it's true."

"But - god, Alex, _why_?"

"It's not like I mean to," Alex said miserably. "Come on, Tom, you know I wouldn't do that. There was - I was trying to- I don't even know anymore. I was right, I think, but-"

"Alex, you're not making any sense," Tom said, and Alex looked at him, frustrated, trying to think of the right words. "Oh my god, your eye…" Tom took a step forward, and Alex stepped away from him.

"Don't," he said quickly. "Don't - in fact, just stay away from me, OK? I don't know who's watching, you should - you should stay away from me."

"Stop talking like a James Bond movie!" Tom snapped. "This is our _school_ , Alex, not one of your - your disappearing acts! Aren't you taking this a bit far? Not everything is to do with your crazy double life!"

" _Yes it is_ ," Alex hissed, and Tom actually took a step back at the look on his face. " _Everything_ is to do with MI6, they get into _everything_ , OK? They will _never leave me alone_ , this whole thing is _never_ going to end, do you understand that? It's not just something to tell cool stories about, I could _die_ every time I disappear for a few weeks, and now it's come here too. If you spend time with me, Tom, you're going to end up hurt."

"You don't mean it," Tom said weakly, and Alex looked away.

"I really do," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"What- what do you want me to do?" Tom asked. He suddenly sounded very young, and Alex was reminded of just how different he and his friend really were these days.

"I don't want you to get hurt," he said simply. "Just - just stay away for the moment, alright? Pretend what you like, but - but don't come near me until this is all over."

"But what _is_ 'this'?" Tom asked plaintively.

Alex shut his eyes again, as if he could shut everything out by sheer force of will. "I don't know," he said finally. "I really don't know."

Tom cleared his throat. "I'll do it," he said finally. "I'll stay away if that'll make you feel better. But - but stay safe, alright? And- just. Let me know you're OK. Somehow."

Alex looked at him stonily for a long moment. "I'll do what I can," he said simply, and Tom nodded.

"I've got to go," he said weakly. "I'll - I'll see you around, OK, Alex? Look after yourself."

He took off at a run back to the school buildings, and Alex watched him go before turning back to look out at the street. 

MI6 would arrive soon.


	5. An Unexpected Ally

The car was, predictably, upholstered in over-comfortable black leather. Alex sank into the butter-soft leather, and felt vulnerable, oddly out of control, trying to find a position where he'd be able to move quickly. It was a car designed to be different things to different people: to those who weren't worrying about what they were facing, it was luxurious. To those who were, it was designed to either throw you off guard – or keep you off balance.

When they finally arrived at the Royal and General Bank, he fought his way out of the seat, fighting the temptation to sink even further into them. He hadn't even got into the building yet, and he already felt defeated - he had no more reserves to draw on. Whatever battle he was fighting, he'd already lost.

**

For the first time ever, they made him wait. He sat for over an hour in a green leather/dark wood room, oddly reminiscent of the Houses of Parliament, idly leafing through the only entertainment on offer, endless issues of 'The Warwickshire Home-Buyer' and 'House and Garden'. There was nowhere to go: the doors – like everything else on this side of the Royal and General's main foyer – were all protected by obviously-armed guards. Even the loos were guarded.

By the time Alex finally got called up to the office on the fifteenth floor, he was thoroughly bored, and starting to be angry. He was well-versed enough with this bizarre world to know that Blunt had been notified of his arrival the moment he stepped through the door, and he knew that his hour-long wait was as much a punishment as anything Blunt was going to say to him when he got into his office - but he hadn't been the one at fault. This punishment wasn't only unfair - Alex had long since given up expecting fairness from MI6 - it was ridiculous. He knew something was going on at Brooklands, something probably related to his errands for MI6, and they'd kept him waiting as a petty power-play.

When he got into Blunt's office, Blunt was as usual joined by Mrs Jones, both as impassive as usual. 

"Alex," Blunt said calmly. "Please, have a seat."

Alex paused, then sat opposite them at the desk. Apart from the surroundings, the scene was an eerie echo of his meeting with Mr Bray a couple of hours ago. "What is it?" he asked wearily.

"We're all well aware of why you're here, Alex," Blunt said, without so much as a flicker in his calm facade. "Perhaps you'd like to explain yourself?"

Alex stared at him. "I don't understand," he said slowly. "Don't you _know_?"

"Your faith in our omniscience is touching, but sadly misplaced," Blunt said smoothly. "I'm afraid, in this case, we _don't_ know. Please - enlighten us."

"There were bugs. In my school," he said slowly. "I had this feeling of being watched, and when I checked - well. I found them."

Blunt smiled thinly. "Well done you," he said blandly. "Yes, there are bugs in your school. I'm afraid they're for your own protection."

"They're _what_?"

"You're an agent of ours who had foiled numerous men with powerful allies – not least, Scorpia," Mrs Jones said, shooting a quick glance at Blunt, and smoothly taking over the conversation. "It was necessary to keep tabs on you - to make sure that you were safe."

" _Safe_? To make sure I was _safe_?" Alex stared at her, incredulous. "Oh, sure, you're quite happy to send me away completely on my own, without protection, but heaven forbid I take a walk without you knowing it." Alex smiled, faint and sour. "If my school is bugged, didn't you see what happened last night?"

"We did," Mrs Jones said soothingly, "and that man has been dealt with."

"Did he tell you he was working for Scorpia?" Alex demanded. Blunt and Jones exchanged a long look.

"No, Alex," she said finally. "He's not working for Scorpia. We have all the details of his employment, and Scorpia is nowhere on his books. He's working for a Dorothea Sweete," Alex snorted, "a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work, but her background checks out. There are no Scorpia links anywhere in her history."

"Because it's inconceivable that she might have _hidden_ those," Alex agreed politely. "I'm sure most of Scorpia put their employment history on their CVs."

Blunt shook his head. "We had Smithers working on it," he said firmly. "Sweete's background would have to be far more complex than it was to fool him."

"Isn't an easy background check worrying in itself?" Alex asked, but Blunt ignored him.

"This is perfectly normal, you know," he said, in a tone that was probably supposed to be kind. He sounded pained. "We should have seen it coming. You've been under a great deal of stress, Alex; you've probably started to feel strained, tired, even paranoid. Maybe you've had flashbacks to some of your experiences, hmm?" Alex shifted, remembering his sparring session with Charlie, and Blunt nodded, a look of almost reptilian satisfaction in his eyes; Alex was a case-study he'd called correctly. "Yes, it's very normal. PTSD affects a lot of our high-risk agents. We've made an appointment for you to see one of our in-house therapists - I think it's for the best."

Alex stared at them both, starting to feel a little desperate. "I don't have PTSD," he said firmly. "I'm - I'm stressed, I know, but I'm not going mad."

"Oh no," Mrs Jones assured him sincerely. "PTSD isn't madness, Alex. It's a perfectly normal way to respond to trauma, particularly at a young age."

"Oh, good," Alex said faintly, then rallied. "No - no, I don't have PTSD. I'm serious, that man is working for Scorpia, and they're _planning something_ , you can't just ignore me! Please, I've _never_ asked you for help, _never_ , but this time I _need_ you, I'll - I'll come back to work for you, if that's what you want, but you _can't just let this happen_!"

Mrs Jones eyed him, faintly concerned. "Work for us? Oh no, Alex - we don't let any of our agents work without clearance from the psych department," she said kindly, and Alex bit back an agonised wail. Why weren't they _listening_?!

"I must say, I'd hoped you'd be a little more - ah - adult about this," Blunt added, and Alex had to swallow down a hysterical laugh.

"Maybe you shouldn't have employed a fourteen-year-old, then," he suggested, friendly. "Just a thought."

"See the therapists, Alex," Mrs Jones advised, "and if they give you a clean bill of mental health, we'll talk again."

Alex snorted. "And how long will that take?" he asked politely.

"No more than a week," she said, and Blunt stood.

"That'll be all, Rider," he said firmly. "Talk to the psychs, get yourself up to strength again. We don't want a repeat of last summer, now, do we?"

Feeling faintly steamrollered, Alex stood too. "No," he said mechanically, feeling rather dazed. He too was beginning to doubt the truth of his own statements. "No, of course not. Um. Are they expecting me?"

"Third floor, first door on your left," Mrs Jones called after him. "You can't miss it!"

Blunt ushered him out.

**

Back in the corridor, Alex found he couldn't face the idea of using the lift, being stuck in claustrophobic cubicle and presented with an image of himself on all sides. He took the stairs.

On the twelfth floor, just as he was starting down the next flight of stairs, a man squeezed himself through the swing door and puffed out a greeting.

"Alex, old boy," he said, smiling and panting. "Could I borrow you for a second?"

Alex stared at him, indecisive. "If you're going to talk to me about Blunt and Mrs Jones, Mr Smithers-"

"Oh, no," Smithers smiled, already ushering him through the doors, "I'm sure you don't want to hear anything more about them. No, this is about what's going on at your school."

"Really?" Alex started to follow him a little more willingly. Smithers was a reassuringly normal point in an increasingly unstable landscape. "Are you the person who bugged Brooklands?"

"Well, not personally, no. But I invented the bug," he admitted cheerfully, hiding his eyes in creases of fat. "Wonderful little gadget, very thin, can go anywhere. For the most part, they're just to side of the white-boards in the classrooms. Magnificent range, pick up sounds from over a hundred metres away…" he opened the door for Alex, and steered him inside. "Do have a seat." Smithers' own seat was huge, but the man still managed to dwarf it. "Now, Alex, old bean. This bit of vandalism of yours-"

"I don't know what you've heard," Alex said quickly, "but-"

"Please, dear boy, credit me with a little sense. I trust my bugs and my science." He smiled warmly at Alex. "This morning, on our play-back monitors, I watched you cut that camera wire, but none of our cameras have lost the connection. And we didn't have any cameras in the door-frame. Ergo, that wasn't one of our cameras."

"I still can't believe you watch me in school," Alex muttered.

"No need to worry, old chap, you're a bright lad," Smithers said cheerily. "We're all very impressed with you down here in Q-section."

"I live to please," Alex said, giving up completely.

"That's what we like to hear," Smithers agreed. "Now, this little problem of yours."

"Blunt and Jones think I have PTSD," Alex told him hopelessly, picking at the flaking leather on the arm of his chair.

"Well, that might be the case," Smithers said, shrugging. "But that's not your problem here. Oh no, old chum," he added, when Alex glanced sharply at him. "No, this problem's much more cut-and-dried. And if upstairs aren't going to help you, well. It's down to Q-Section to get stuck in, isn't it?"

"Is it?" 

"Oh, yes," Smithers beamed at him. "We're all terribly fond of you down here. It's _much_ more exciting to design things for you - far more of a challenge." For a second, all the banter and bluster dropped away from him, and he looked straight at Alex, his eyes keen. "And, whatever the habits of my employers, I'm not one for sending children into danger, let alone unarmed. So, if the danger's coming to you, best be ready for it, that's what I say."

"I think I like your sayings better than Alan Blunt's," Alex said, smiling a little. It was such a _relief_ to have someone who'd _listen_ to him.

"Well, of course you do," Smithers said, with bluff good-humour. "So, shall I show you my collection of goodies?" He leant down, and spoke into the potted plant by his desk. "Miss Pennyfeather? The prototypes, please." He looked up at Alex again. "I'm sorry, old boy, but you haven't given me enough time to really get to grips with these new things, so they may be a little faulty, if you try to use them."

"What are you giving me?" Alex asked.

"You'll see." A woman entered, holding a tray. "Ah, Miss Pennyfeather, thank you. I'll have them here, please. Thank you." She smiled, handed him the tray, and left. He put it in front of him, on the desk, and Alex stared at the items which were supposed to keep him safe against whatever danger was coming for him: a old-fashioned keypad phone, a watch, and an iPod Shuffle. "As I said," Smithers went on, waving at the tray, "just prototypes, but they're all I've got for you at the moment. They should do the job – though, perhaps you'll end up doing some impromptu field-testing with them, we'll have to see. Best case scenario, you hand them back to me in a couple of weeks, no harm done, no hard feelings."

"I hope so," Alex said fervently. "I don't want anything to happen at school. It's not like I haven't got enough to deal with already." He sighed. "This time last year, I was worrying about taking my GCSEs."

"Fate's a fickle thing, old chap," Smithers agreed sympathetically. "Still I'm sure this will just make a noise like a hoop and roll away, no danger." He met Alex's incredulous look, and smiled a little. "But in case it doesn't, you have these. Now, I'm particularly pleased with the iPod - though she be but little, she is fierce! There's a bomb in here that'll take out a small room or a large wall." He frowned down at it. "Or possibly a whole building, it's only in the preliminary testing stages at the moment." Alex, who had been fiddling with it, put it back down gingerly. "Not to worry, dear boy, it's got to be off 'hold', and you'll have to press fast-forward three times. You should have ten seconds to throw and run once you've done that, so don't worry! But don't dawdle either, old son, or you'll be in a proper pickle."

Alex nodded, committing the instructions to memory. Glancing up at Smithers, he couldn't resist a sly grin. "Have you put any music on?"

"James Bond theme tune." Smithers replied, with a fat chuckle. Alex grinned, wryly. "Still, apart from the bomb, I'm afraid that that's all the shuffle does, as of yet. Given a little time, it could have been much more, but still. Needs must, and all that."

"Really, I'm glad I've got something." Alex said quietly. "And someone who actually _believes_ me."

"Oh, that's not all, old bean. Onto the phone." He picked it up, and it seemed to disappear in his podgy hand. "The pin number is, I'm afraid to say, double-o-seven seven. It seemed fitting at the time," he shrugged apologetically. "At the very least, you won't forget it. The phone itself is on the O6 network – the "bank's" network, you know, all the agents are on it. I've inserted you on it under my own name, everyone's used to me testing out various makes of phone under my "network" account, no one'll think twice about it. It only makes intra-network calls, but I didn't give it to you so you could text your friends!"

"That's alright," Alex said, beginning to feel a little hysterical again. "I don't have any friends to text."

"I'm sorry to hear that, old sport," Smithers said jovially. His nicknames were beginning to grate on Alex's already frayed nerves, but he was at least with it enough to recognise that they were one of Smithers' defensive techniques - keep everyone focused on the ridiculous mannerisms, and no one would notice him engineering their downfall with half a mobile phone and some sticky tape. "There's always friends on the end of this line, at any rate. Most of the special features are incorporated on the speed dial system. Standard bug-repellent, of course," both of them knew that they weren't talking about insects, "and a nifty little distress signal, ready and waiting to go. Hold down the red button," he pointed at it, "and it'll start up automatically."

"Thank you," Alex said politely, and Smithers smiled.

"That's not all, dear boy, not at all. No, the other little gadget is this one." He pressed one, very carefully - his fingers seemed almost too large for the keys - then pressed the call button. "This will record everything within a two hundred metre range," he said, and hit 'end call'. "You needn't worry about teasing out different conversations, our techs will do that - and if you want to record and transmit to us, that's speed-dial two. Have you got that?"

"Speed dial one to record, speed dial two to record and transmit," Alex repeated obediently, and Smithers beamed at him.

"Excellent! I'm afraid that's it for the phone - I can't give you anything more sophisticated; questions would be raised. But I think you're fairly well set. Between the shuffle and the phone, you should be able to defend yourself for long enough for us to get there and save the day."

Alex paused for a long second, then shook his head. "No one will come," he said quietly. He'd allowed himself to get swept up in Smithers' indomitable enthusiasm, but Smithers hadn't actually _solved_ the problem - he'd just given Alex some tools to help him solve it himself. And while the bomb might feasibly be useful - if there were no innocent bystanders to worry about, which was unlikely considering this was probably going to take place at his school - a recording device and a distress signal weren't actually likely to be that much help.

"They'll come," Smithers said firmly, dropping the banter once more. "I'll see to that myself, if I have to. I believe you, Alex, and believe it or not, I carry rather a lot of weight around here." He smiled, gesturing to himself. "I have a lot of agents who owe me favours, and I don't fancy working for an organisation that let a child get killed. _And_ ," he added, seeing Alex looking sceptical, "you aren't precisely the boy who cried wolf, you know, old chap, and you're too valuable to the higher-ups to let you get killed to prove a point. They'll come."

Alex smiled rather wanly. "I hope you're right," he said, and cleared his throat, eager to change the subject. "What's the watch?"

Smithers beamed, picking up the watch and waving it him. "Elegant little thing, isn't she?

"Lovely," Alex agreed politely. "What does it - er, she - do?"

" _Do_? Oh, nothing, dear boy. She's just a present, from me to you. I know the last watch you were given was from Scorpia, and I'm sure you haven't worn that since you found out the truth, have you?"

"No," Alex admitted, swallowing hard. "No, I haven't."

"You can wear this one, then," Smithers said, kindly pretending not to notice Alex's reaction.

"It's not, like, a tracking device, or anything, is it?" Alex asked, taking it warily.

"No, it's a watch. A rather advanced watch, I admit, but it's just a watch, old boy. Even we stop updating things after a point, and once you can tell the time in three different countries, and work successfully at a hundred metres under water, I think you'd be advanced enough to be left well enough alone." Standing, he lowered his voice and said, "look, old bean, I'm strictly going against orders here, but I don't like the way the Powers That Be are handling you on this one. They've taken a misstep somewhere, and they'll kick themselves for it if they lose you because of it."

"Sir?"

Smithers looked more serious than Alex had ever seen him, even in the course of this conversation. "Alex," he said slowly, "it's my job to have gadgets for every mission my superiors could possibly think up. After a while, all of this guess work means that I can second guess them pretty accurately, and I know that right now, protecting you is important. If they won't do it, I'll take steps of my own. So this may be going against their orders, but," here, he smiled a strange, self-deprecating little smile, "it will protect you better than a handful of altered toys."

"Mr. Smithers, you've done more for me than anyone else here," Alex said sincerely.

"I know," he nodded, his normal, cheerful mask slotting back on so quickly and so firmly that if Alex hadn't witnessed him, he would never have known that behind the eccentric, harmless exterior, there was a razor sharp intelligence. Even witnessing the devices Smithers dreamt up wouldn't have told him that - his mask of cheerful geekery was impenetrable. "Now, dear boy, follow me, please."

Alex followed him through a bewildering rabbit-warren of corridors, until they reached a tiny, brushed steel lift. There were no mirrors, or carpeting inside – it was just a metal box, as unlike the plush, carpeted affair which Blunt and Jones used as could be imagined. Alex didn't see what button Smithers pressed, but when the doors opened, they were in a concrete-floored area with no windows and a much lower roof than the upper storeys. There, Smithers hailed another man, younger than him and markedly thinner.

"Alex, this is Dominic Martin. Nick, have you got them ready?"

"Yes," the man's voice was low, and very quiet. He looked remarkably like Alex might have, had he not become a spy so young – floppy blond hair, which fell into brown eyes just as Alex's did, but his face was rounder, more relaxed than Alex's. Alex had begun to notice a pinched, worried look about himself as his missions got more and more nerve-wracking and personal. "So you're Alex Rider. Pleased to meet you." He held out a hand, and when Alex shook it, his grip was firm and calloused.

"You'll get along marvellously," Smithers said heartily. "Nick, I must dash, someone's bound to drop by my office at just the wrong moment and start asking questions, and we don't want that, now do we? This'll all come tumbling down if someone starts poking around, and if Blunt or Jones find out we gave Alex one of these, where would we be?"

"Out on our ears," Nick agreed. "OK, Tim. I'll see you later."

"Blades, at eight?"

"Blades at eight."

Alex waited until Smithers had gone, and then said questioningly, "good friend?"

"Half-brother," Nick flashed him a brief grin. "Same mum, different dad. Hence, different surnames."

"You don't look at all alike."

"Very different interests, too," Tim said easily, leading Alex into what was unquestionably a firing range. "Now, Tim said to get a gun ready which would be powerful but easily hidden. I've found three for you – the Browning HP, which is small, but packs a hell of a punch, a Walther PPK 7.65 - it's a very light weapon, but it's got more stopping power than the Beretta, and an Enfield .38. Now I've seen you, I think we can put away the Browning. Tell me, what weapon did you shoot when you were with Scorpia?" He said it so casually that Alex was almost conned into believing he didn't care. Only the slightest tightening of the skin round his eyes gave him away.

"They gave me a Belgium made gun," Alex said warily. "I can't remember the make – it might have been a Walther."

"Were you any good?"

"They said I was," Alex shrugged. "Until we got onto photo-targets."

"I think we'll steer well clear of those," Nick said firmly. "They aren't our usual style, particularly not for fourteen year olds. But then," he added, with a rather wry smile, "I don't usually hand out guns to fourteen year olds, so I suppose today is a day of firsts. Still, let's stick to traditional targets, shall we? I don't think we want to, ah, push our luck. Here, you take these," he handed Alex the guns, "I'll take the ammo, and let's try you out with them. I've kept the shooting range clear since mid-morning."

By the time Alex left, he had Smither's gadgets with him, and the Walther PPK hidden in his bag. Beyond warning him not to use it without thinking, making sure that the safety was always on, and making sure he kept it hidden but always within reach, Nick hadn't said too much on the subject, except that he was a good shot, and to try and keep his head, if he ever needed to shoot. He'd given him a holster, read him a safety lecture, and told him to call Smithers if he wanted to practise with the gun. "His number will be on that phone he gave you," he'd told Alex cheerfully. "Get in touch any time, Alex. I'd rather you came in every day than you waved that thing around like an amateur."

Alex still shuddered back from the prospect of having to actually shoot anyone. Since Scorpia, he'd been less gung-ho to get his hands on a gun, and he didn't want to have to actually pull the trigger on anyone - but he knew that if he was given a choice between a member of Scorpia and himself or any other innocent bystander, he'd pick the Scorpia member every time.

He just hoped he'd never have to make that choice.


End file.
